


The Only Way

by Shi_Toyu



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Tony Stark, Character Study, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Not A Fix-It, POV Stephen Strange, Protective Tony Stark, Relationship Study, Spoilers, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 21:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18669157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/pseuds/Shi_Toyu
Summary: AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS. SUMMARY INSIDE.





	The Only Way

**Author's Note:**

> While everyone mourns, Stephen reflects.
> 
> WARNINGS: canonical character death  
>  
> 
> This is actually the only fic I was inspired to write almost immediately after seeing the movie. (You can see that didn't last very long.)

Stephen had disliked Tony Stark since the first moment they’d met. In all honesty, Stephen had disliked him even before that, disliked him to the point that it edged dangerously toward hatred. It wasn’t anything personal, not really. It wasn’t like Stark had done anything to him to earn Stephen’s ire. Stark _represented_ quite a lot, though. He was everything that Stephen hated about the man he used to be.

He and Stark had come from the same place, really. They’d both been entitled assholes with egos too big for any room they entered. They went about their lives without regard for anyone or anything. They were the kings of their castles, and then they’d fallen. Stark, of course, had gone first, and then he’d risen from the ashes better than ever. He was Tony Stark, with a company going a new direction and making more money in their new commercial division than they ever had off of weapons. He was Iron Man, an actual, real superhero who was adored by the public. Sure, he had some bumps in the road, but he always came out on top and acted like he knew he always would.

When Stephen fell, he lost everything: his job, his friends, his entire life. Yes, he gained the ability to wield magic and became the Sorcerer Supreme, made new friends, but he’d had to give up _everything_ for it. What had Stark had to give up? His war profiteering?

So, yes. It wasn’t anything personal, but Stephen had disliked Tony Stark for quite a while before they met. He knew it wasn’t entirely rational, but he was allowed to have emotions. It hadn’t helped that Wong had discovered Stark that made an appearance in one of Beyoncé’s videos, thus promoting him from a minor annoyance disrupting the peace and balance to a minor celebrity in Wong World.

Then Stephen had actually met the man, and his impression hadn’t changed.

Stark was arrogant, selfish and irritating. He hadn’t even been willing to place a phone call when the world hung in the balance. More than the world, even. The entire universe hinged on their ability to stop Thanos from getting his hands on the Infinity Stones. They _could not_ fail. So, Stephen set his irritation aside and worked with Stark, because Stark was also a brilliant man with enough experience to know what he was talking about. His suggestions and plans made sense.

They arrived on Titan and met the Guardians. They were all idiots. If possible, Stephen liked than even less than Stark. Maybe.

Stephen looked into the future, trying to find a way for them to win, to determine which path they could walk to victory. Sometimes he died, the vision cutting short and not taking him any further. Often, his death was by the snap, Thanos’s victory. Other times he lived through the snap only to die later on, trying to make things right or fruitlessly going through the motions of life until the end of his days. He was not the one whose life captivated him, though.

So many possibilities, so many outcomes, and it was Tony Stark who made the difference in every one. Though the lives and the circumstances were all different, Stark was always the same. He made different choices, maybe, but he always stayed the same.

No matter what was happening, no matter how hard they were fighting in that possible reality, Stark always managed to find some bit of happiness. He found joy and he reveled in it, used it to motivate himself and, in turn, all those around him. He fought ferociously to defend it. Except… When it came to the final moments, when it was make or break and even though Stephen watched it _fail_ time and time again, Stark always made the sacrifice play. He gave up that joy, that happiness, that _life_ so that others could have a chance at their own.

There was only one where he didn’t, a universe so closely paralleled to the one where they won that Stephen had thought, for a moment, he’d been repeating a possibility. When it came to the evening where Stark discovered how to successfully time travel, he did something Stephen hadn’t been expecting.

“Delete it. Hide this. I don’t want any record of it left.”

If it had been one of the first possibilities he’d seen, Stephen might have burned with anger. He might have howled with rage and hatred. It wasn’t, though, and Stephen had watched Stark sacrifice himself again and again, over and over, always laying down on the line to give others even a scrap of a chance. What was going on here?

Stephen watched as the decision tore Stark apart. The peace, the life he’d managed to build, was ripped apart by his overwhelming guilt. He lost everything, even the daughter he’d been willing to put before the entire universe. Stark couldn’t live with what he’d done. He died alone and broken, and Stephen wept for him, for the pain and suffering he’d gone through.

Stephen returned to himself to find Stark leaning over him and was able to recognize the concern and caring in those bright eyes for the first time. How had he ever been so blind? Tony Stark was nothing like who Stephen thought he was. He was a man of honor and deep emotions; a man Stephen could hold up as an example and learn from for how he himself would like to one day live.

And now Stephen knew he had to die.

.

Standing at Tony Stark’s funeral, dressed in his best suit with Wong beside him, watching as so many others grieved, Stephen didn’t cry. He observed Stark’s daughter, Morgan, listing against her mother’s side, drained and unsure what to feel. Stephen would keep an eye on her. If she didn’t come to the conclusion herself, Stephen would make sure he knew why her father had made the choice he had. He would make sure she knew it was a choice motivated by how _much_ he loved her, how much he cared, not how little.

He grieved, yes, but not for the same reason as the others. He grieved that this was the only way, that he hadn’t been able to see another solution, and that he’d been the one to prod Stark along at that last, crucial moment. He didn’t grieve for Tony Stark, though. He knew better than that, now, having seen the things he’d seen.

This was what Tony Stark would have wanted: peace. And they would be okay. Stephen would make sure of it.

It was the least he could do.


End file.
